Tank plant defended from cuts

Monday

Apr 29, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 29, 2013 at 11:06 AM

WASHINGTON - Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army's hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle. Lawmakers in both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.

WASHINGTON — Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army’s hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle. Lawmakers in both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.

But senior Army officials have said, repeatedly, “No, thanks.”

It’s the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unfunded. Republicans and Democrats have fought so bitterly for years that lawmaking in Washington has ground to a near-halt.

Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there’s a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.

“If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way,” said Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff.

Why are the tank dollars still flowing? Politics. Keeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good-paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank’s many suppliers are.

The nation’s only tank plant is in Lima. So it’s no coinci-

dence that the champions for more tanks are Ohioans: Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two Republicans who are among Capitol’s Hill most-prominent deficit hawks, and Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics. “ The one area where we are supposed to spend taxpayer money is in defense of the country,” said Jordan, whose district in northwestern Ohio includes the tank plant.

The Abrams dilemma underscores the challenge that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel faces as he seeks to purge programs that the military considers unnecessary or too costly.

Federal budgets are always peppered with money for pet projects. What sets the Abrams example apart is the certainty of the Army’s position.

Sean Kennedy, director of research for the nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste, said Congress should listen when one of the military services says no to more equipment. “When an institution as risk averse as the Defense Department says they have enough tanks, we can probably believe them,” he said.

Congressional backers of the Abrams upgrades view the vast network of companies — many of them small businesses — that manufacture the tanks’ materials and parts as a critical asset that has to be preserved. The money, they say, is a modest investment that will keep important tooling and manufacturing skills from being lost if the Abrams line were to be shut down.

The Lima plant is a study in how federal dollars affect local communities, which in turn hold tight to the federal dollars. The facility is owned by the federal government but operated by the land-systems division of General Dynamics, a major defense contractor that spent close to $11 million last year on lobbying, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The plant is Lima’s fifth-largest employer; it has close to 700 employees, down from about 1,100 just a few years ago, Mayor David Berger said.

But the facility is still crucial to the local economy. “All of those jobs and their spending activity in the community and the company’s spending probably have about a $100 million impact annually,” Berger said.

Jordan, a leader of House conservatives who has pushed for deep reductions in federal spending, supported the automatic cuts known as the sequester that require $42 billion to be shaved from the Pentagon’s budget by the end of September. The military also has to absorb a $487 billion reduction in defense spending over the next 10 years, as required by the Budget Control Act passed in 2011.

The tanks that Congress is requiring the Army to buy aren’t brand-new. Earlier models are being outfitted with a sophisticated suite of electronics that gives the vehicles better microprocessors, color flat-panel displays and a more-capable communications system. The upgraded tanks cost about $7.5 million each, according to the Army.

Out of a fleet of nearly 2,400 tanks, roughly two-thirds are the improved versions. The fleet’s average age is less than 3 years old.

The Army’s plan was to stop buying tanks until 2017, when production of a newly designed Abrams would begin. Orders for Abrams tanks from U.S. allies help fill the gap created by the loss of tanks made for the Army, according to service officials.

The Army receives about four tanks a month. Current foreign customers are Saudi Arabia, which is getting about five tanks a month, and Egypt, which is getting four. Each country pays all its own costs.

Congressional proponents of the program feared there would not be enough international business to keep the Abrams line going.

General Dynamics estimated in 2011 that more than 560 subcontractors were involved in the Abrams program and that they employed as many as 18,000 people. More than 40 of the companies are in Pennsylvania, according to Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., also a staunch backer of continued tank production.

A letter signed by 173 Democrats and Republicans in the House last year and sent to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demonstrated the depth of bipartisan support for the Abrams program. They chided the Obama administration for neglecting the industrial base and proposing to terminate tank production in the United States for the first time since World War II.

Portman, who was President George W. Bush’s budget director before being elected to the Senate, said allowing the line to wither and close would create a financial mess. “People can’t sit around for three years on unemployment insurance and wait for the government to come back,” Portman said. “ That supply chain is going to be much more costly and much more inefficient to create if you mothball the plant.”

Verhoff Machine and Welding in Continental, Ohio, makes seats and other parts for the Abrams. President Ed Verhoff said his sales dropped from $20 million to $7 million in the past two years. He also has laid off about 25 skilled employees.

“When we start to lose this base of people, what are we going to do? Buy our tanks from China?” Verhoff said.

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